i'm not sure i expected any of them to start, particularly if we were starting AD at the 4. but i agree in general. THT was supposed to be a 25-30mpg player who anchored the offense for stretches, for sure. don't see how anyone but ariza moves the needle defensively, which is where we've been awful.
If Lebron or AD get hurt, we still have a chance to make life hard to anyone at the West. That's the luxury of having Westbrook that needs to be counted
My main complaint from yesterday: we gave up 18 offensive rebounds which resulted in the Grizzlies having 16 more possessions than us. They had over 30 points of second chance opportunities. Can’t have that happen if you want to win games.
oh s*** we're at SA tonight?! pop is licking his chops. dude's going to go HARD after this one, and if lebron's not playing/full-strength, we're in trouble. curious to see if we deploy rondo.
The pick and roll defense needs to get better. They're going to face way better players than Jakob Poeltl.
we played our non-AD centers 34 minutes. and we gave up a ton of points and got outrebounded again. i'll take the win, but this is unsustainable. we don't rebound, defend, or make threes. at least two of those things have to change dramatically if we're going to contend this year.
Vogel needs to stop playing Russ and Rondo at the same time. It’s a recipe for disaster on both ends of the floor. Eye test demonstrates it and the plus minus stats confirm it. No other coach in the league would even consider doing it for obvious reasons.
We are 5th in 3pt % and 9th in 3pt Made (2 from the 4th and 4 from the 3rd). I buy this for the whole year I agree with the defense (worst team in pts in the paint - WTF - and 22nd in DefRtg) and rebounding (28th in 2nd chance pts allowed and 27th in reb %) We are actually 3rd in blks although allowing the most in the paint. We got killed with the Suns in that area, apparently it continues to be like that. Maybe it's the defensive scheme pushing the ball inside like 2 years ago but our defensive coverages are not yet good enough to make stops
lol, ok, my reflexes kicked on the three point shooting. and rebounds are maybe not THAT important, but it's weird that we keep getting outrebounded. the defense has been just head-scratchingly bad. i mean, we had some roster turnover last year, too, and our d stayed solid. i know it's been about secondary rotations a lot, but we've had 10 games now to iron some of that out, counting preseason. need to see that defense start trending up very soon.
We’ve had stretches of good D in the fourth quarters. Reaves, Dwight, AD lineup was pretty good last game at getting stops. Not sure yet how we sustain that for 48 mins. Need to see the next 10-15 games.